Steinberg Media Technologies has released their latest iOS app, Cubasis, a multitouch sequencer streamlined for the iPad that offers musicians a portable music production solution.

"Cubasis for the iPad is what many of our customers have been waiting for, and all Cubase users will instantly feel at home with it," commented Carlos Mendoza Rohde, product marketing manager at Steinberg. "And with unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, export to Cubase and lots of loops, sounds and effects, Cubasis is sure to meet the expectations put upon a sophisticated music production and recording software."

Supporting iPad's multitouch gestures, Cubasis opens to the familiar arrangement window with its track list and inspector known from Steinberg's Cubase music production system. Cubasis offers export to Dropbox, AudioCopy and SoundCloud plus project compatibility to its desktop equivalent, Cubase, for Windows and OS X operating systems.

Cubasis features unlimited audio and MIDI tracks. Recorded tracks can be mixed with the integrated mixer, processed with more than ten audio effects the likes of compressor, equalizer and delay, and edited within the easy-to-use Sample Editor.

The included 70+ instrument sounds are based on Steinberg's HALion Sonic workstation, complemented by over 300 MIDI and audio loops. These can be triggered using the virtual keyboard and drum pads or by hooking up to Core MIDI compliant external keyboard. The Key Editor allows users to add and change MIDI notes efficiently.

Discussion

I'm going to hold off until they add support for an in-app synthesizer (like NS's EDEN,). Until then, this still looks great, but without a built-in synth, it doesn't do me much more good than any other sampling app, like BM2, without a synth. I understand it has coreMIDI support, but sometimes that's a hassle, and it has its track limits. Nonetheless, this is a huge step foreward in iOS music making, and perhaps Steingburg will create a VST-like protocol for iPad DAWs after this has a (hopefully and most likely) huge success.